Auto Italia presents Bystander, a new performance work by UK-based choreographer Richard Pye and TLGBQIA+ youth collaborators from Tower Hamlets and Newham.
Bystander explores the politics of witnessing, the choices we make in moments of intervention, and the urgent realities of trans and queer safety. Developed with TLGBQIA+ young people amidst heightened scrutiny of queer communities, the work uses movement as a language for self-advocacy and collective support. It positions bystandership and solidarity as shared responsibilities built through care and action.
Through task-based investigations, practical movement exercises, and reflective discussions, youth collaborators have contributed as dancers, choreographers, and critics at every stage. Drawing on Pye’s practice, which foregrounds intricate contact work and somatic approaches, participants explored collective physical structures that reimagine shared responsibility—central to the performance.
With four dancers, motion becomes a negotiation. Each gesture and shift is a dialogue, balancing trust and agency. Audiences are invited to attune to one another’s presence, navigate unexpected contact, and engage with emerging collective patterns. The work creates space to witness and inhabit the subtle dynamics of care, attention, and connection.
Collaboration & Co-production
Bystander is grounded in the voices and experiences of TLGBQIA+ young people. Developed in collaboration with participants from Come As You Are, a queer youth-led initiative in East London, the work was co-created through workshops, discussions, and movement practices. Working directly with these young people was the project’s initial spark, setting its direction and ethos. Led by Richard Pye, participants reflected on how boundaries, consent, relationships, and community shape both personal experience and collective life, exploring how trust, care, and collaboration are negotiated in everyday interactions.
Safety, trust, and communication were approached as co-created commitments: acts of listening, holding, and mutual care, much like the collective support that allows a body to lean, fall, or rest.
Each session unfolded through a cycle of introduction, physical exploration and reflection, using movement activities, games and discussion to investigate these ideas collectively. Concepts such as touch or communication were first introduced through conversation, then embodied through practical exercises, before being revisited in group reflection, allowing participants to move fluidly through thought and action. This approach fostered a shared vocabulary of movement and meaning, ensuring the ideas weren’t just spoken about but physically experienced and reinterpreted together.
Through these workshops, the choreography was co-produced by the participants, artist and dancer, with each movement, gesture and exchange emerging through collective inquiry.
Workshops with adult TLGBQIA+ communities added historical and cultural perspectives, highlighting queerness as a force disrupting normative power structures. Vulnerability is approached not as weakness, but as a space where agency, connection, and joy coexist.
Across all sessions, participants considered how structure can protect and guide while leaving room for autonomy, surprise, and creativity—a distinctly queer approach to organising and relating.
Creative Team
Youth Collaborators:
Angelina Bou-Chedid, Colin Haye, Gideon, Proteek, Leanne, Satnav, Scarlett & those who wish to remain anonymous.
Dancers:
Louisa Fernando
Timothy Firmin
Silas Grocott Cain
Gian Sanghera-Warren
Choreographer:
Richard Pye
Sound Designer:
Rainy Miller
Lighting Designer:
Seth Rook Williams
Dramaturg:
Joe Moran
AV Operator:
Cheng Keng
Bystander has been made possible through the generosity, creativity, and expertise of many collaborators. We are grateful to the participants, partners, and contributors whose insight and commitment have supported the work at each stage.
With thanks to Antony Daly Luna, Axel Arigato, Centre 151, Charlie Flynn, Dominic Rocca, Douglas Dare, Genevieve Reeves, Grace Nicol, Halo, Juan Sánchez Plaza, Juliet Jacques, Kaia Goodenough, London Performance Studios, Lua Lloyd, Mosaic LGBTQ+ Young Person’s Trust, Pietro Mazzotta, Protection Approaches, Staffordshire St, Temitope Ajose, and Tilly Wace.
With special thanks to our partner:
CAYA (Come As You Are) – LGBTQIA+ Youth Project, Youth Empowerment Service, Newham
Kaz Algacs – LGBTQIA+ Youth Participation Worker, Newham
Tim Aldcroft – Youth Service Manager, Newham
Bystander marked the launch of Auto Italia’s new Participation Artist-in-Residence programme, an initiative supporting artists to develop new work in close collaboration with local communities through our existing network of partner organisations. Each six-month residency invites artists to embed themselves within Auto Italia’s engagement programme, cultivating sustained relationships through workshops, discussions, mentoring, focus groups, and feedback sessions. Grounded in co-design and shared authorship, the programme ensures that community voices are meaningfully woven into both the process and outcomes of Auto Italia’s cultural work.
Each residency culminates in a public presentation of new work shaped by the ideas, experiences, and priorities of its participants. In doing so, the programme offers a platform for communities to shape and author ambitious, high-quality artistic work that reflects the forms of representation and access they wish to see within cultural spaces.
Bystander is commissioned and produced by Auto Italia, with support from The National Lottery Community Fund and Arts Council England.
Richard Pye (b. 1994) is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and facilitator whose practice is grounded in improvisation, physical rigour and complex contact work. Their work explores the radical potential of movement as a tool for communication, learning and liberation. Richard’s choreography centres instinct, humanity and the individual experience, celebrating the wealth of sharing space, beauty and presence with other bodies, brains and baggage.
They have performed nationally and internationally with choreographers and companies including James Cousins, Studio Wayne McGregor, Lea Anderson, Russell Maliphant Company, Rosemary Lee, Tim Casson, Stefano Poda, Nina Davies and Gareth Chambers. Performance highlights include Sadler’s Wells, Somerset House, Theatre de la Vie, Frieze, Matt’s Gallery, Transmediale, Lyon Biennale, GDIF, The Place, FIERCE, Transform, Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Teatro Regio di Torino, Venice Biennale, New York City Center, The Joyce, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the V&A and the Lyon Opera House.
Their choreographic and movement direction spans stage, screen and socially engaged contexts, including music videos and dance films for artists such as Little Mix, Bob Vylan and Juri Xi. Richard has directed large-scale community works including the Commonwealth Games Baton Relay Closing Ceremony in Ipswich, The Boys, and multiple productions for Kickstart Company, where they were formerly Artistic Director.
They have collaborated across live art, fashion and film with Afra Zamara, Eva Rothschild (with work exhibited at the Venice Biennale), Imogen Knight and James Massiah, and have worked as a movement director for Vogue Italia, Gay Times, Selfridges, Ice Watch and Stonewall.
Beyond performance, Richard has presented a weekly radio show on Camden Radio and hosted an interview series for Southbank Centre featuring MIA, Ashley Walters and Princess Nokia. They have led and contributed to panels and public talks at Southbank Centre and The Place.
Richard trained at London Contemporary Dance School at The Place and completed full-time study in Ballet and Contemporary Dance at Purchase College, New York.
